POST FALLS - After being gunned down by Germans as a B-17 pilot during World War II, Bob Groen is thankful to be alive.

On March 18, 1945, Maj. Groen and his crew attached to the U.S. Army Air Force's 92nd Bomb Group were headed to Berlin on their seventh mission when the plane slowed dramatically.

"No big blast, no exceptional bounce - we just started to slow down," Groen recalls.

Groen, 20 at the time and now 85, opted to turn east into Russian-held territory as it was only 75 miles away and navigated a rough landing at an airstrip in Warsaw, Poland. Only one crewman was injured and taken to a hospital for treatment.

Groen, who has homes in both Wisconsin and Florida, is in the area planning for a reunion for the 92nd U.S. Army Air Force-U.S. Air Force Memorial Association this summer at Northern Quest Casino.

With other B-17 pilots by his side, Groen, the new president of the association, was honored for his service on Monday by local veteran Graham Crutchfield with a Buck knife at Buck Knives in Post Falls.

Other pilots in the group received a knife at a previous association event, and Monday was Groen's turn.

"Men like Bob Groen deserve to be honored," Crutchfield said. "There's not many left (from World War II), and we don't want to forget them. If it wasn't for them, we'd all be speaking Japanese or German."

Groen said his crew did an admirable job of safely landing.

"We applied the brakes as fast and as hard as we could, and stopped inches from the far end of the newly finished blacktop, with mud, stones and rocks just beyond," he said.

Irv Baum, who was with Groen on Monday for the ceremony, was shot down on March 16, 1944, northeast of Paris and didn't have as peaceful of an ending.

Baum and three other crew members were taken as prisoners of war by the Germans.

"Thirteen months, 13 days," the 86-year-old Napa, Calif., man said of his time as a POW. "The nerve war was never ending. At the beginning, they had me concerned because they referred to me as a Jewish person.

"But once I was in the prison system, the Germans adhered to the Geneva Convention."

Baum and Groen count their blessings and say they are thankful to be honored to this day.

"I'm extremely lucky to have survived," Baum said.